As VoIP network services grow, VoIP network service providers begin to offer third party partners the opportunity to use VoIP transport services for their own third party applications. These arrangements typically require VoIP service providers to allow third party partners to host their own applications in their third party network infrastructure. The VoIP network service providers will have access to the third party hosted application server from the VoIP transport network to interact with the hosted applications.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for providing secure interface to externally hosted application servers in a packet network, e.g., a VoIP network.